When Arctic Monkeys won the Mercury Music Prize last year, they quipped that Richard Hawley (whose Coles Corner had also been nominated) had been robbed. There was no small element of Sheffield tribalism at play there, but they had a point. Coles Corner crowned a series of increasingly lush records in which Hawley, formerly a guitarist in Pulp and the Longpigs, refashioned himself as a redemption-seeking balladeer holding a torch for his industrial hometown.

It demanded a big suspension of disbelief: that an ageing indie sideman could make classic his own grubby emotional misdemeanours (not to mention the city with the most confounding one-way system in Britain). Thankfully, Hawley, now 40, had the Orbison baritone croon and the throwback musical chops to do it. Like the Coral and Amy Winehouse, Hawley proved that some of the finest British music of the last few years has been gloriously retro. His 'Born Under a Bad Sign' might well have been written for Winehouse.

Lady's Bridge has a tough act to follow, then. Imbued with sadness at the death of his father, it is the most emotionally and musically realised of all his albums. Dazzling opener 'Valentine' boasts both swooping arrangements and battered ruefulness. Pensive pianos tinkle, like rivulets over stones. 'Dark Road' echoes with the time-worn twang of semi-acoustic guitars.

Named after Sheffield's oldest bridge, linking the posh bit to the not-so-posh bit, which was recently damaged by the floods, Lady's Bridge also boasts 'Tonight the Streets Are Ours', possibly Hawley's angriest song. Asbos are hardly the stuff of Sinatra, but Hawley manages to turn his disgust at the demonisation of youth into something so elegant that the blue-rinse brigade could dance to it.

Lady's Bridge falls down on two minor counts. Hawley feels increasingly mired in a musical world where it is perpetually 1961. A songwriter as talented as he ought to be able to stretch himself more. Similarly, he accepts the call of the road as heroically self-evident. They say it is only when your father dies that you become a man. It would be fascinating to hear a Hawley album about staying at home in his beloved city and accepting adult responsibility.